Government less Space Colonies

What would happen to the human space colonies if their intergalactic government falls and the Earth gets destroyed, and they have to live on their own without a government? I don't know if there are similar settings like this in other Sci-Fi novels or movies. Most of the space opera books I read always have some form of government.

Are you writing a story in which this happens? If so, what happens is what you decide.

My guess, though, is that each space colony would form its own government. You'd wind up with a bunch of little colony-states. There's no guarantee that each would have the same form of government - some might become democracies, others dictatorships, others attempts at various kinds of utopia.

Do some research. Find out what happened when the Roman Empire collapsed, for example. Or the Mongol empire, or any other empire. You can model your future on Earth's past, if you wish.

My question becomes: when you say space colony, do you mean other planets, or do you mean manmade objects? If the latter, I would offer that you do some research into the command structure and daily routine of large contemporary ships like aircraft carriers. An artificial space colony is a place, but it is also a thing, a piece of equipment that needs maintenance and running. Any sort of government that comes into being within one is going to have this added facet that really isn't present on Earth. Polluted water on Earth is a problem and a political issue; polluted water in a space colony with a broken water treatment system and no other resources other than what exists within the walls of the colony is a catastrophic thing.

I agree with minstrel, most likely each colony would form it's own government.

However, an alternative approach is true anarchy - voluntary interaction, rather than chaos - could be formed. You could still have community governance, without the mandatory coercion and authority of government.

Check out the show Falling Skies, this show has some interesting ways of how it handled itself after an alien invasion.

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Sorry

If you make it as far as season 3 one group of survivors who have declared themselves a new government and have elected a new president. Then its found out that the president of the USA is still alive. So you have two governments ~ oh I cant tell you anymore as it will spoil to much of the show...

One of my shorts involve sovereign nations on Mars that gained independence from Earth government. I guess you could say that planets that are ran by corporations have colonies that don't really have a governing body, unless the corporation is the government.

Another example you might be talking about is something in lore for a tabletop game series known as Warhammer 40,000. In the lore, they have these planets known as "Feral worlds" which mean that in the ancient past colonists from Earth would colonize these planets but after over 20,000 years, some of the world's inhabitants who's ancestors were the ancient colonists live in hunter-gathering like days isolated from the rest of Humanity on civilized worlds. So many of these worlds did not have a government.

Also, I noticed in your OP you used the word "intergalactic". Sometimes that means your talking about the travel between distant galaxies. An example would be a ship traveling from the Milky Way Galaxy to another one (which is a bit impossible even with advanced propulsion technologies). The better word would be "interstellar" or "interplanetary".

An interstellar government sounds better. I decided that each colony starts their own governments, corperations, and anarchy. It does make sense that they will form their own communities in order to survive and procreate.

An interstellar government sounds better. I decided that each colony starts their own governments, corperations, and anarchy. It does make sense that they will form their own communities in order to survive and procreate.

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Well if an Interstellar government is in place, then even the "Anarchy Colony" would have government rule over it.
Here's an idea. Let's say the capital of the interstellar government is on the moon of a gas giant and the other planets which are occupied by colonists are sort of autonomous. But they are all part of an interstellar confederacy.

True anarchy is a rare thing. Firstly, on your manmade colonies, the ones floating in space, anarchy will quickly take those out. People decide they don't want to do their jobs because "you're not the boss of me" and the colony's mechanical systems will soon collapse. Giant space coffin. And even in the world of the Road Warrior, Master Blaster and Auntie were in a power struggle for dominance in Barter Town. Humans are pack animals (the modern PC term is 'social animal'). We look for a social structure in which to operate because we're wired for it. It's part of our evolutionary heritage. People who aren't alphas look for alphas to follow. Some people are the romantic 'loan wolves', and most animals that have pack social structure have them, but they are always the exception.

Lesson from history: When James II was deposed by the people of England the colonies in America were left without a way to appoint societal positions. That was a privilege of the King, and there would be no king of England for several years. For the most part the colonies just appointed they're own people and waited for the government of England to be restored.

What we can see here, it that governments might derive their power from another source. But their resources are local.

The government of the space colonies is composed of people from those colonies. The are their own police force, tax men, governors, judges, and juries. And more than anything else, these people will be resistant to change.

Life in the colonies would go on as normal, unless some other force drove it to change. The collapse of a government on another planet would have little effect.

Caveat: The local government of a small town in Massachusetts had seen their magistrate retire, and had petitioned for a new one just before James II was deposed. Left without a judge the appointed one from their own town, who may have had an agenda of his own. The town's name was Salem.

So basically if one government falls, another one will rise. Even people who lose a leader, will vote for another leader. Maybe some would go barbaric, but there will always be new civilized factions that will restore law and order.

The elements that made the government were local. When the king was deposed the colonies didn't appoint a new king, and they didn't fly off the handle and devolve into anarchy. They just went on like the always had and made adjustments accordingly.

Everyone was happy with the way the government was run, and just because it had collapsed in England they didn't see any reason to change anything.

What's more, changing a government is a terrible challenge for everyone, and not a lightly engaging pastime. There has to be a divisive and destructive reason for people to just abandon their system.

But history shows that the collapse of a system on the other side of the globe is not a good reason.

In anarchy, the most vicious and ruthless become the de facto government. To survive, the rest form a coalition to take dwn the bullies, and establish some form of government to keep it from happening again.

Well, if you want everyone on a planetary colony to go tribal, you're going to have to write a lot of events that leads up to a "road-warrior"-like world.

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Not really. That kind of thing is backstory, and is usually best left out (unless it's extremely important). After all, they didn't do that in The Road Warrior itself, did they? There was just the post-apocalyptic world, fait accompli, and the audience just bought into it without questioning it.

Not really. That kind of thing is backstory, and is usually best left out (unless it's extremely important). After all, they didn't do that in The Road Warrior itself, did they? There was just the post-apocalyptic world, fait accompli, and the audience just bought into it without questioning it.

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Yes that can happen. In a Sci-Fi story however, it's always interesting to have some backstory.